Long Lost
by DarkLightShades
Summary: It's difficult to move on after losing the people who mean everything to you, but Shadow and Silver have that in common, as well as a dream to give hope to the remenants of humanity. Eventual ShadowxSilver.
1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:** This story is based on the end of the Sonic 2006 game, ignoring the Last Story and continuing on from Silver's timeline after Blaze dissapears under the assumption that his future was not changed. Eventual slash of the ShadowxSilver variety, with a dash of Mephiles thrown in for good measure. All comments and criticisms welcome!

* * *

**Part 1**

Rebirth City had been built on the remains of Crisis City, the favoured hunting ground of Iblis. Silver didn't think that was the wisest decision that could have been made. He knew better than most that the ground wasn't at all stable; Iblis had burrowed beneath it like a giant worm, and through the tunnels he'd made magma had followed, but even that did not thwart the determination of the humans to take back what had been theirs.

Silver could admire that. Determination was what had seen them through this far, lasting through the centuries that Iblis had ruled, and so he had stayed even though the city was full of bad memories and mournful ghosts. Maybe one day they would fade, and the city would be as beautiful as it had been in the past.

In this present, though, it still had a long way to go. Survivors had flooded into the city after Iblis was gone, but most of them were still living in tents and in the decimated remains of the old city ruins. Rebuilding was taking a long time, with materials scarce and most of the manpower needed to protect the encampment as one would protect the seed of new life. The city was still infested with all kinds of monsters, though they seemed to understand that the balance of power was changing, and the attacks were far less frequent.

Silver did whatever he could to help – from guarding the walls to helping move the heavy bricks used to build the new houses – and his efforts were regarded with awe by the townsfolk. Even though he claimed that Blaze was the one really responsible for finally sealing Iblis away, the credit of the act was given to him. To everyone, he was the champion who had saved the world. He'd been frustrated by this title until General Gordon had explained that the people just wanted a hero that they could see and touch. Someone to help protect the fragile hope that from now on things could be better. He had reluctantly agreed not to argue the distinction anymore, although he vehemently declined being named the leader of Rebirth City though many people had called for it.

That dubiously honourable position had been given to the man who was suited far better, in Silver's opinion. General Gordon was one of the last surviving members of what had been the human's military effort to destroy Iblis. They, among many others, had also failed to rid the world of the immortal being, and eventually over the decades their numbers had dwindled and their troops had disbanded in face of the futility of their task. Gordon had remained in the city, however, with a mere handful of loyal soldiers, trying to keep people alive, finding safe zones, scavenging for food and water. His people had laid the foundation of Rebirth City, and he knew far better than Silver how to keep everyone in line and encourage them to work together.

Silver often watched him walking among the people. Always, Gordon would be interrupted by someone demanding his attention, be it a soldier wanting orders or one of the civilians complaining about food shortages. Silver didn't think he could have managed all that attention, especially by himself. Without Blaze…

"You've got that look on your face again, youngster," Gordon said from behind him, and Silver jumped. The one thing he often forgot himself was that Gordon was still a soldier despite the flecks of white starting to run through his hair and the deep lines around eyes that had seen far too much. The man was tall and broad, made of unyielding muscle, and his particular specialty had been silent ambushes. "It doesn't help anything."

"I know." Silver spared him a weak smile. Gordon was not at all fooled.

"We've all lost something." The General leaned on the wall, staring out at the decimated city. "It heals in time. You just have to keep moving."

Silver had once thought the world would stop if Blaze ever left him…now he knew better. Life kept on going no matter how much he hadn't wanted it too, but he'd shortly realised that it was meant to be that way. Two hundred years of terror and destruction. A lifetime of fighting the flames. Blaze wouldn't have wanted him to give up just when they finally had a chance to rebuild.

Silver shook his head as though it could dislodge the feeling of melancholy, and forced himself to look up at Gordon's stern visage. "Is something going on? I saw you talking to one of the scouts earlier. He seemed upset about something."

Gordon smiled grimly. "Ah. It's not bad news for us, if that's what you're worried about. Not yet, at least. Actually, I was meaning to talk to you about that. I'm going to be leading an expedition through the city tomorrow and I was hoping you would come with us."

Silver's ears pricked. "What kind of expedition?"

"We've discovered a signal on one of the old military frequencies coming from the volcano. I was hoping to track it to its source."

Silver looked briefly towards the rickety communications tower in the centre of the town. It had only been raised a week ago – technology was especially scarce after the rise of Iblis – but since then messages had been pouring in from other stranded pockets of survivors.

"You think we'll find more people?" That was always uplifting for both the townsfolk and the newcomers, who were welcomed home like old friends.

"In the Volcano? Unlikely." Gordon mouth was curled into a thoughtful frown. "No, I suspect it might be…something else."

Come to think of it, the scout who's looked upset had been one of the soldiers originally under Gordon's command, and the signal had a military origin. Did that mean something? Gordon looked worried, which gave Silver good reason to be as well. "What do you mean?"

Gordon smiled tolerantly down at Silver, and gave the young hedgehog a reassuring pat. "Never you mind, youngster. We'll have enough to worry about tomorrow without me telling you ghost stories. Just make sure you're up early tomorrow. We leave at daybreak."

Silver nodded firmly. "You can count on me."

* * *

Seeing the sun rising over the horizon was still a novelty, and many members of the town as well as Silver himself often woke before dawn to watch it even though the mornings were often cold and grey. Once upon a time, the smoke from Iblis's flames had choked out the sky. Silver had never even known that it was supposed to be clear and blue until he had visited the past.

Dawn was always a flurry of activity. The changing of the guard, as most often they were attacked by creatures who preferred to work in darkness, and the exhausted night shift would head wearily off to their beds. It was also the time when most of the scavengers would head out into the city, hoping to salvage and gather what supplies they could before rushing back into the safety of the town before dark. On this particular morning, there were a number of people milling about to see the expedition off. Silver found himself the target of many curious eyes, and tried to hide quietly in the cab of the truck.

Gordon found him there, and smiled wryly as he climbed into the drivers seat. "They don't mean any harm."

Silver squirmed. "I wish they wouldn't though. I wasn't the only one who fought against Iblis."

"You're the only one still around," Gordon remarked, starting the truck. It spluttered hesitantly to life, shuddering a little beneath them before beginning to move at Gordon's careful direction. Working vehicles were also rare, but they weren't in high demand. The terrain of the city was too rough for them.

"There's you," Silver pointed out.

"That was more than a quarter of a century ago," Gordon said. "I bet most people have forgotten."

"I haven't."

Gordon smiled a little at that. Glancing out the window and trying to mentally judge how long it would take to reach the Volcano, Silver decided it would be a close call to get there and back before dark, and that was only if it didn't take too long to find the source of the signal. Still, he could make the task a bit easier. "I'll go up top and keep an eye out."

"Watch your back," Gordon told him. "I'll be using the old highway, so save your energy. We might be needing a bridge."

Silver nodded and clambered out the window to sit cross-legged on top of the cab. It wasn't the most comfortable way to travel, but it let him keep his eyes out for anything that might be lurking in the long, early morning shadows and it gave him a clear view of the road ahead to know if Gordon would need his powers to keep the truck on its path. A few times one of the tires would hit a sink hole and Silver would give the vehicle a psychic push to free it, saving the need to stop and do so manually which would have wasted precious time.

Halfway along the old highway, Gordon's prediction came true. A huge section of the road had crumbled away, leaving an empty gap between one support strut and the next. Gordon pulled the truck to a halt, and Silver stood to better gauge the distance. One of the other soldiers walked to the edge and whistled, kicking a stone and listening for the echo of its landing. It was a long wait.

"Wouldn't want to fall down there," the soldier muttered to his fellows.

Gordon looked at Silver intently. "Can you get us across?"

It wouldn't be easy, especially because this far up there wasn't a lot of material Silver could work with to make a decent bridge, but levitating the car itself would be harder. Still, his powers had still grown in the past few months even without Iblis to hone them against, and he nodded tentatively. "Yeah. Just keep your speed steady."

"You're real sure, right?" The nervous soldier asked. "Because that's a long way down."

Gordon glared mildly and one of the others hissed quietly in the soldier's direction, but Silver understood the fear. His powers made people uneasy, so he tried not to use them too spectacularly around the town. They didn't know the limits of what he could or couldn't do.

"Don't worry," Silver reassured him. "I can do this."

Backtracking would take far too long anyway, and though it would take a lot of concentrated effort Silver knew he could hold out. The distance was only about thirty feet. Waiting until the soldiers were back in the truck, Silver looked back down the highway and concentrated.

There were two huge signs, offering directions to places long since destroyed, and a rusted billboard that advertised some kind of drink from a nearby building that was nearly level with the arch of the road. Old metal shrieked in protest as Silver tore them from their perches and directed them to fill the gap. Beneath him, inside the truck, one of the soldiers swore at the noise, but Silver ignored it as he scowled. Even with all three objects lined up to make a steady bridge, they only reached halfway, and looking around Silver couldn't see anything else to make use of without ripping away a part of the highway itself, risking the only solid ground they had.

He leaned over the side of the cab, looking into Gordon's window and speaking quietly. The soldiers were nervous enough. "You'll have to stop in the middle while I rearrange the bridge. I can't make it any longer."

"It would be safer for you in the cab," Gordon replied, his mouth set in a grim line. He knew a little more about Silver's powers than most, and knew that Silver couldn't be aware of his body during the effort it would take to hold the bridge. "If you fall-"

"I need to be able to see what I'm doing.," Silver told him, but tried to smile. "Don't worry. I won't fall."

He could use his powers to float even if he did, but then he wouldn't be able to save the truck from the same fate if it came to that. He tried not to think about it as he settled himself firmly in the centre of the cab, working to convince his body to hold its balance.

It was harder to float a large, heavy object than to hold a smaller object stationary with something heavy on top of it. Silver wasn't sure exactly why that was, but it was an intrinsic truth of his abilities that he didn't question. Holding wasn't the problem; it was doing so while the metal quivered and groaned, while the soldiers muttered under their breaths, and while his body swayed with the slow motions of the truck that was difficult. When he had to focus, however, it was Blaze's voice he heard in his ears. She was the one who had taught him control when his powers had been ungovernable and dangerous and she'd been the only one brave enough to get close.

_Breathe_, she advised him, and he did, counting the seconds and keeping one fraction of his awareness on the progress of the truck. When it halted nervously at the edge of the billboard Silver knew it was time, and still keeping in time with Blaze's silent rhythm he moved the bridge.

The billboard shuddered violently, and deep in his mind Silver quailed at the idea that his body might be thrown over the edge, but he couldn't afford to stop. Doing two things at once was always far more difficult, and his concentration wavered from the effort of holding one sign in place while moving two others. The tasks tried to interfere with each other. The sign he held wanted to move, and the two he moved wanted to freeze, and dragging them to where he needed them was like trying to write his name forwards and backwards at the same time with each hand.

Just trying to wrap his mind around it was making his head ache with effort, and he could feel his powers drain with the unexpected exertion, but finally he got the signs were they needed to be. Gordon wasted no time once the path ahead was clear, and when Silver finally felt the weight of the truck leave his bridge he dropped it in relief.

A moment later he thought to wonder how he would get them back across on the return trip, but decided he'd worry about that when it happened. The pain in his chest, panting like he'd just run a mile, was a more immediate problem. When his vision cleared he also found that he'd been knocked out of his previous position, and was sprawled across the top of the cab on his side. One of his arms had even fallen over the edge, but just in case he'd slipped any further Gordon had protectively grabbed his wrist even though it would have made the task of driving harder. He squeezed Silver's arm inquiringly. "All right?"

"Yeah," Silver said, only a little shakily. His powers would recover soon enough.

"Good," Gordon said, and that was all that was needed. They drove on through the slowly warming city as the sun kept on rising.


	2. Chapter 2

The signal monitor was a bulky, rectangular box that was heavy enough to need two hands for support. One of the other soldiers carefully fine-tuned the knobs for the best reading while Silver peered at it curiously. She offered him a wane smile. "The signal's still strong."

"That's good, isn't it?" he asked.

Gordon stalked up beside them. "Perhaps."

Beneath his worn grey coat Silver suddenly realised that the General was wearing thick, rubber-lined armour. Slung over his shoulder was a dull looking rifle that Silver stared at in fascination. The weapons had seen little use over the last century, being pointless against Iblis and no longer in mass production, but all the soldiers on the expedition were carrying them. It made Silver uneasy.

"We need to move. There's no telling how deep underground the source may be. Silver, you take the lead. We'll cover you."

"Right." Somehow, he didn't find the knowledge of guns at his back comforting, but it did make sense for him to go first. He was the lightest, and had the reflexes needed to save himself from a trip into the lava should the ground suddenly give way.

The air inside the volcano was scalding. One of the soldiers coughed quietly into his hand as the acrid smoke reached his lungs, but most of them were too acclimatized to it to notice. During Iblis's most active days, the whole city smelled of burning rubber, and the sky rained soot.

Silver set a quick pace, moving across uneven rock and steaming fissures with intrinsic grace. His shoes were capped with a soft, synthetic metal that would endure the worst of the heat without melting, and the rest of his attire was equally fireproofed although the wristbands of his gloves were heating up uncomfortably. On his own he would have levitated himself instead for more speed, but he had to be mindful of the humans. Dressed in their armour, carrying their heavy weapons, they were strained already. The stifling atmosphere must be making it nearly unbearable for them.

Only Gordon was keeping his composure, urging his men on with quiet, curt directions. He caught Silver's eye and tilted his head subtly towards the walls, pointing out what Silver had noticed but the rest of the soldiers had probably missed in their distraction. They were being watched.

But not approached. Eyes followed them from the indigo shadows, gauging their potential as a meal. Rocks echoing in the tunnel seemed to hint that at least one creature was stalking them, though whether it would attack was less certain. The group stayed close together for protection – a well ingrained instinct. There was no opportunity for an attack to break their formation.

Silver thought they were going to make it until their steady downward path began to shrink until it was a mere ledge against the wall that descended into a deep shaft in a steep downward spiral. They would have to go in single file, spreading out the group and leaving them far more exposed than anyone liked. Silver took his time to explore the first stretch of the path, making sure it was firm enough to hold his weight while the rest of the group took a break, drinking thirstily from their canteens. Gordon had taken responsibility for the signal monitor, and from the expression on his face he didn't like what it was telling him.

"The source must be right below us," he told the hedgehog when Silver returned to the top. "Under other circumstances I would prefer to find another way down, but we need all the time we can get. This route will be fastest."

The alternative was spending a night out in the city or, worse, the volcano itself. Both of those would be dangerous in their own right. "Just be careful. I think the path is safe, but you're heavier than me."

"I'm less worried about the ground," Gordon began, eyes sliding back down the tunnel, "than I am about the company we might have."

Silver thought of the bat-like creatures who had liked to nest in the towering buildings of Crisis City and nodded grimly. A flying enemy in the shaft would be problematic. "I'll do my best to keep them off us."

"No point in waiting then," Gordon said, and whistled softly through his teeth. The soldiers immediately straightened their gear with only a minimum of grumbling. Silver was always impressed by their professionalism.

"Stay in the centre of the group," Gordon told him, slinging the signal monitor over his shoulder as he began the treacherous descent.

The pace was excruciatingly slow, made worse because Silver's senses were stretched to their limits in preparation for the attack he was sure would come. The eerie, howling noise of wind blowing up through the shaft made his fur stand on end, and every time someone knocked a pebble loose he tensed as the echoes made it seem like a much larger rock slide. He didn't like that Gordon was going first, especially once they passed the limits of what Silver had explored. He was the man they could least afford to lose.

Far above them came an unearthly screech. One of the soldiers wobbled dangerously on the edge but Silver gave him a brief psychic push back in the right direction that probably went unnoticed. Everyone's attention was focused above, as two fire red shapes started to drop swiftly down the shaft.

"Here they come," murmured a female soldier, levelling her gun, but Silver reacted faster. Reaching out with his mind, he gripped one of the creatures firmly and knocked it furiously into its companion. The two of them spiralled crazily into one of the walls, thankfully on the opposite side because their impact sent a rain of rocks tumbling down the shaft. The noise was incredible, and Silver's nearly missed a second sound beneath it; a deeper, closer rumble that, bewilderingly, came from behind instead of in front.

"There's something in the walls," he yelled, a little too late as one of the thick, burrowing worms appeared almost directly above them. Someone yelled in surprise, and another started firing.

Silver yelped and covered his sensitive ears in pain. In close quarters, with every sound reverberating in the shaft, the gunfire was deafening. It splintered his concentration, making it impossible for him to bring his powers to bear as more worms began tearing their way out of the rock. He crouched, hoping to at least stay out of the way as the soldiers did their work, and because his attention wasn't focused above he was the only one who saw that the vibrations from the tunnelling creatures had weakened the ledge. The stone beneath Gordon's feet was starting to crumble.

"General!" he called, but amidst the sound of battle his voice was lost. He scrambled hurriedly to get around the other soldiers but he wasn't fast enough to race gravity. The path disintegrated, and Gordon started to fall.

"No!"

He didn't stop to think before he jumped out into the abyss. Everything seemed to be running in slow motion until he swore he could hear each individual bullet in the numerous bursts of gunfire and at the height of his jump he seemed to hang almost motionless in the air…and then time seemed to turn and suddenly he was falling fast enough to make it difficult to draw breath in the rushing air, but it wasn't quite fast enough to catch up to Gordon who was heavier and falling faster.

With a grunt of effort Silver concentrated his powers to push himself downward. It was a harrowing endeavour because he didn't know when the shaft would end, and as they fell into the earth everything grew darker. He could only see himself, with ripples of green psychic energy making his fur gleam in the darkness, and the small light beacon affixed to Gordon's shoulder to mark his target.

With one final burst he propelled himself into Gordon, scrabbling to grip the human's torso and at the same time envelop them in a bubble to try and slow their fall. Gravity pulled at them unpleasantly, and he heard Gordon hiss at the abrupt change in velocity. Silver's arms and mind felt the strain of trying to hold the human simultaneously, and he wasted most of his energy just easing them to a more controllable speed. There was no way he could raise them both back up again, and it seemed the path they'd been following had eroded away this far down the shaft. Feeling out blindly and desperately with his powers, he ran up against a hard surface not too far below them with considerable relief.

"We're almost at the bottom," he panted, loosening his powers slightly to speed their descent a little as he aligned them right side up again. He wouldn't be able to support them both for much longer.

"My men-"

"We'll have to find a way back up," Silver told him. "Watch your feet."

Gordon would reach the bottom first, and Silver was careful to make sure the General was being planted on solid ground before allowing himself to drop the remaining two feet with a sigh. He sat down before his legs gave out on him, but kept a thread of his power active to keep the light glowing around his gloves.

It was pitch black; unnaturally so. Gordon took a torch from his coat and turned it on, but the beam seemed to be overpowered by the thick darkness. It barely illuminated the ground in front of them, let alone anything else.

"We'll have to feel our way out," Gordon said briskly, keeping whatever concerns he had well hidden. Silver wanted to reassure him, but was distracted by a strange whistling noise that he couldn't place until something heavy landed and exploded close enough to shower him with sharp fragments of stone. He cried out in pain, and then surprise as Gordon took his arm and began dragging him along.

"Move!" the General urged. "Debris from the battle."

Silver hadn't thought he could use his powers again so quickly, but the adrenaline spike was effective, as well as the knowledge that he could be crushed from above without ever seeing the danger. He threw up a wall of energy and winced when it was immediately assaulted by falling rubble and what felt suspiciously like the softer body of a worm. Or the remains of one. He could smell the vile scent of its molten blood and tried not to gag.

"There's another tunnel here," Gordon said, shoving Silver inside before entering himself. Silver could feel the tips of his quills touching the ceiling, which meant it must have been a tight fit for a human. He dropped his shield, cringing at the sounds of an avalanche from the shaft. He couldn't see, but he could feel the solid weight of the rocks closing the tunnel behind them.

"I guess we can't go back now."

Gordon nudged him forward. "Then let's get moving."

Silver could walk nearly upright, but Gordon had to shuffle along on his knees. Metal armour grated noisily against the rock, and Silver sincerely hoped that the worms didn't travel this far down. They hunted by vibration, and Gordon was making enough of it. Thankfully, it seemed the tunnel wasn't as long as he'd started to fear.

"I can see light ahead," Silver announced, quickening his pace.

Gordon whispered harshly, "Wait for me."

It made sense that Silver should check it out first. He could use his powers to push back any threat and give Gordon time to get out before they got trapped in the tunnel. There were no creatures waiting, however, and the tunnel widened out into a much larger cavern. For a moment he felt like he couldn't breathe, and the dim light he thought he'd seen seemed to flicker. The darkness, thick and cloying, seemed to close in around him, squeezing the air from his lungs, but when he blinked the illusion seemed to vanish. The walls were dully lit with heat, indicating a nearby lava flow, but there was another light source in the room that was much stronger, and completely out of place inside the volcano.

_What is that?_

"Silver," Gordon growled lowly, finally dragging himself out from the tight space, but the young hedgehog seemed to have forgotten the possible danger in favour of examining the strange centrepiece of the large cabin.

It was a box, except not the right shape, though it was still geometrical. Sort of triangular, and very obviously man-made. The base was solid metal, but the top was some kind of cage-like mesh. Multiple layers of protective shielding protected the strange artefact, but he could still see through it and inside was…

_Shadow! _

He stared, having never expected to see the black hedgehog again. Shadow had lived two hundred years in the past, so how was he here? Time travel? But more importantly, Shadow was obviously in trouble. His eyes were closed but there was a tension in his expression that suggested pain, and rather than being protected in the box he seemed to be trapped inside it. His arms and legs were both pinned down with thick manacles, and there was some kind of helmet around his head that looked like it served no pleasant purpose. Experimentally, he tugged at the first layer of mesh. It was cool to the touch at first, but flared warningly the longer he held it until he was forced to let go or have his gloves be singed.

"Silver!"

Gordon's booming voice made him jump. The General only used that particular tone when he was calling unruly recruits into line, and Silver had never been on the wrong end of it before. He stared with wide eyes.

"What do you think you're doing?" Gordon snapped, standing tall and glowering down at the young hedgehog.

Silver pointed at the cage meaningfully. "This is-!"

"It's _dangerous_, that's what it is. I would have thought you'd have a little more common sense than to go near it."

Silver shrank on himself slightly, feeling chastened. "But-"

"We need to destroy it," Gordon said, looking briefly to his weapon before deciding it wouldn't be enough to do the job. "Can you use your telekinesis to push it into the lava?"

Silver stared, aghast. "No!"

Gordon didn't seem to notice his distress, and heard only the answer. "Of course, you should rest after saving us from the fall. Harrison has the charges. We'll need to find the rest of the group and come back."

"But there's someone inside it!"

Gordon looked at him stoically, then took a cautious step towards the cage and peering inside it. He pulled back, facing away from Silver. "I know it looks like a hedgehog but it's not, Silver. That thing in there is a weapon. A mistake made by the military that they were always too afraid to destroy for fear of awakening it. They hoped that hiding it underground would be enough, but when I received the signal I knew we had to come and destroy it for good. We don't need another Iblis…we could not survive it. Do you understand?"

"…Yes." Silver glanced helplessly at the cage. Shadow lay still as if already dead, never knowing his fate was being discussed.

"Then come." Gordon began to walk, heading for another barely visible tunnel across the cavern. "The quicker this is done the better."

Silver followed him slowly, with every step away from the cage feeling heavier and harder. He knew all about impossible decisions. The suffering of few for the sake of many. One life pitted against the world, and the future. He'd already been forced to make that choice.

But he had been wrong.

"Silver?"

Gordon had entered the new passageway. This one looked as though it might lead upward, leading them back to the higher tunnels where hopefully they could reunite with the group. Silver looked at him apologetically, palms glowing with green light. "I'm sorry."

The ceiling of the passage collapsed at his direction. Gordon yelled in surprise, leaping away, but before he was blocked behind Silver's carefully controlled cave-in, Silver saw the expression on his face. Betrayal.

"I'm sorry," he repeated to empty air, but he was only sorry that Gordon didn't know what Silver had learned. Shadow had taught him about choices, and about not believing everything you were told. Silver was going to make sure he had all the facts before he consigned Shadow to the lava.

And if it was the wrong decision, if this was somehow not the Shadow he knew, then he would accept the consequences of his actions and do as Gordon had wanted. As long as Shadow didn't have a Chaos Emerald – not likely given the circumstances – then Silver should be able to deal with him.

The first problem would be getting the cage open. Silver spent ten minutes circling it like a hawk, prodding it this way and that searching for any kind of opening mechanism but every surface was flat and unyielding. Like it had been made with no intention of ever being opened. The thought made Silver frown, and he determinedly banished Gordon's warnings from his mind.

He would have to rip it open by force then, if he ever wanted his answers. He focused on the first layer of mesh, eyes narrowed to slits as green light flashed in his vision. Reaching out with telekinetic hands he _pulled_. The metal groaned softly, like the protest of a heavy sleeper being pulled from wakefulness, but it did not break and after a minute of straining Silver had to let it go. The moment he did he collapsed rather suddenly, landing painfully on his tail in a rather undignified sprawl. It had been a long while since he'd come up against something that didn't yield against his powers. He huffed indignantly, forcing himself back to his feet. Blaze never let him get away with slacking off.

"Maybe this won't be so easy," he murmured to himself, trying to be reassured by the sound of his own voice. Perhaps it was paranoia after locking Gordon out so crudely but it felt like he wasn't alone in the cavern. Silver trusted those instincts, but at the same time he didn't think it was more of the creatures out there in the dark. It felt…different.

It's probably just Shadow, he chided himself. The black hedgehog certainly made for eerie companionship. Sealed in a box that might as well have been a coffin, not moving or, it seemed, even breathing, he might as well have been a corpse. Silver had seen a few people killed in his short life and it had never been easy.

None of those thoughts were helping his dilemma with the box. He wondered briefly what it was made from. Time had left it dull and tarnished, and the inside of the volcano had smeared it with soot, but there were no flaws or weakness in the metal. It must have been something the military developed. Highly advanced, nearly impenetrable…The engineers in Rebirth City would have loved to examine it, but Silver couldn't take it back there and he doubted they would have any kind of tools to help him break into it.

He wasn't at his best, but he knew it would take more than himself to get the cage open. At the same time he couldn't try anything that might hurt Shadow in the process, which dismissed the idea of using the lava to try and melt the metal, or throwing the cage around in hopes of denting it. No, he needed more power and a good amount of luck.

What he really needed was the Chaos Emeralds.

He didn't keep those with him though. They were hidden safely, their existence unknown to anyone but himself. Using them might have made the rebuilding of Rebirth City that much faster, but he hadn't wanted to see them used for such a mundane purpose. Not when the warmth of Blaze's hands could still be felt, imprinted on their surface after her sacrifice. He barely wanted to touch them himself, but surely she would understand.

He had no doubt that Gordon would first reunite with the rest of the team, and then return to do as he'd threatened. Silver couldn't afford to leave the cage behind. As inconvenient as it was he could have to bring it with him out of the Volcano. Sighing at the prospect, he wrapped his power around the cage again, and this time simply directed it to _lift_. It was heavy, surprisingly so for its size, but Blaze had made him practice with boulders and cars. He could manage it long enough to get to the Chaos Emeralds.

He put his hand to the side of the cage and looked inside once more, but Shadow remained still and unresponsive despite the movement.

"Don't worry, Shadow," Silver told him, cementing his own determination. "I'll get you out of there."

Shadow made no sign that he had heard, but Silver had not expected otherwise.


	3. Chapter 3

It was nearly sunset by the time Silver had managed to make it back to the city on foot, and he hoped valiantly that Gordon had found the others and managed to get back inside Rebirth's walls. The skeletal buildings were casting heavy shadows and the sky was a dying ember shade of orange. Soon the creatures would come out to hunt, and even though he was tired the knowledge made him quicken his pace. The cage followed sluggishly behind. He was tempted to drop it, but even though logically he didn't think Shadow would be at risk he didn't like the idea, and in any case he was nearly there.

No place in the city was entirely safe, but Silver and Blaze had survived for years by finding little havens to crawl in to at night; large enough for just the two of them, where the creatures couldn't follow, and where they could curl around each other and sleep a little easier in each other's presence. It was in one of these that he'd hidden the Emeralds, locked safely in a box that smothered their energy and kept them from harm.

He let the cage drop – not quite as gently as he'd wanted to, but Shadow had yet to voice a complaint about the bumpy ride – and looked around cautiously. He still had that unpleasant vibe of unwanted company, but nothing moved in the darkness. He should have waited to be sure, but impatience and urgency made him direct his mind to the hidden entrance and with a mental nudge an innocuous rock jumped out of the way, revealing a small tunnel beneath.

He couldn't take the cage with him, so he would have to trust that it would be fine for a few minutes while he retrieved the Emeralds. He turned a small frown on it, as though daring it to move while he had his back turned. It sat innocently in stillness. Satisfied, he crawled into the small hole, and into the space that had once been his former home.

Or one of them, at least. It was wise to have several places to hide in just in case one was compromised by the creatures or in case their scavenging had taken them too far to reach safety before nightfall. That had been less problematic as they'd gotten older, when Silver had learned to lift himself telekinetically and Blaze had become an expert at navigating the buildings with elegant grace, but he too easily recalled a number of sleepless nights spent huddling in unsafe buildings and praying that they wouldn't be found before dawn.

Of all their burrows, however, this was the one they had used most frequently, and it had been the last they had occupied together before Mephiles had offered them his deal. More than any place else, even more than Rebirth City, Silver associated it with 'safe', and so it had seemed natural to keep the Emeralds there.

He found the box exactly where he had left it, standing out all the more because he and Blaze had never kept much in the way of possessions. He touched it, struck momentarily by the uncertainty of whether he was doing the right thing. It was always so much easier to make these decisions when Blaze had been there to point out the pros and cons in her logical way. He wondered what she would tell him now.

_Probably to stop time wasting_, he thought with a small smile. _And to mind the noise of that motor. It's probably important. _

In his distraction he'd almost missed the fierce drone of an engine and the squeal of tyres. It was completely out of place in the city ruins, and with a rush of bewildered surprise he grabbed the box and pushed it hastily back through the hole before crawling out himself. His tired, aching limbs protested being made to move so quickly but he ignored them. He recognised the sound of that truck.

Gordon should have been back at Rebirth already. He shouldn't be risking himself in the city so close to dark. Did getting rid of Shadow really mean so much to him?

Apparently so, judging by the way the engine screamed and the speed with which the truck rounding the buildings, miraculously avoiding the potholes and debris that littered the road. It bore down on Silver with deadly intent, and the pale hedgehog jumped desperately for the cage, landing unsteadily on its top.

"Up!" he said desperately, willing the word to be the focus of his powers, and the cage lunged awkwardly upwards just before the truck would have crashed into it. For a moment he wondered if Gordon had just intentionally tried to kill him, but decided it was more likely that the General had trusted Silver's reflexes to get out of the way.

Below him he heard the vehicle squealing to a stop but he couldn't afford to spare it a thought when the cage was wobbling in his mental grip, threatening to drop like a stone. Barely considering the consequences, he spied the window of the closest building and hurled the cage towards it like a drunkenly thrown stone. His aim was true, however, and he curled up into a tight ball to protect himself as the glass shattered and rained down around him.

It was a miracle he didn't lose hold of the box or fall off the cage altogether. He staggered back to the window, looking down at the truck. Gordon glared back up at him, and Silver's temporary relief at counting all members of the team alive and present was quickly snuffed by the realisation that they were stalking towards the building, guns drawn.

_Uh oh. _

He'd wanted to wait a while to rest before trying to use the Emeralds, but now it seemed as though he didn't have a choice. His temples pounded angrily, his vision gone watery, and he knew he wouldn't be able to use his psychokinesis on the heavy cage any longer, but if he could get it open he could still probably still carry Shadow himself. The black hedgehog would be much lighter. Silver might even be able to lift them both, and then when Shadow felt ready prove that he was a person instead of a weapon he could come back with Silver to Rebirth City and they could explain everything to Gordon.

He pried open the box, trying to ignore how his hands were shaking and how the rusted lid was almost too much for him to manage. It made an audible 'pop' when it came loose, nearly throwing him off balance and causing the two Chaos Emeralds to chime together. Their light seemed to drive away the darkness, and with a soft sigh he took one in each hand.

Just holding them made him feel stronger. Exhaustion melted away, his headache receded, and the world snapped back into sharp clarity. This room was a few stories off the ground, so he had a minute or two before Gordon reached him. Plenty of time to crack open the cage and be gone. With two Chaos Emeralds it would be easy.

He drew a deep breath, calling forth the power in the jewels and feeling it flood into his veins and into the room. He looked towards the cage and willed the layers of mesh to peel away. "Open!"

There was a noise. It might have been the rending of metal or it may simply have been the gasp of his own breath. _Pain_, he thought hazily as the world spun and very suddenly went dark as the shadows swallowed him whole.

* * *

"Hey."

Something cold was poking into his forehead. He wanted to bat it away, but his arms felt too heavy to lift. The taste of blood in his mouth was startling enough to rouse him though, and Silver opened his eyes to be confronted by the barrel of a gun and a scowling soldier on the other end of it. He blinked rapidly, voice thick with confusion. "What-?"

"Don't move," she advised him, and though the inherent threat of the gun was being literally waved in front of Silver's nose, her eyes showed just a hint of sympathy. She wasn't much happier about their relative positions than he was.

He tried to raise his head a fraction of an inch and failed even at that. The room seemed to be swaying under his back. It felt bizzarely like when Iblis had dug beneath the city, causing earthquakes at random, but the soldier seemed to be having no trouble staying upright. He moaned softly, feeling like his body was half on fire and half asleep, but from somewhere in the region of his numb hands he realised he could still feel the hard surfaces of the Emeralds against his palms. He hadn't lost them yet.

He turned feebly, trying to reorient himself in the suddenly alien room, and almost immediately his eyes fell on the cage. The mesh burned white hot, and had been ripped open down the centre. Had he managed to make it though the rest of the layers? Was Shadow alright? The need to find out nearly won against his body's weakness and he twitched convulsively before being jabbed by the tip of the gun again. "Stop that."

"Shadow," he gasped, not liking the odd compression of his chest. It felt like his ribs were bruised, but he couldn't think of how it might have happened. "Is he-?"

"Silver," Gordon's voice was soft but stark despite the ringing in the hedgehog's ears. "Enough."

It was hard to ignore an implicit order from the General. Silver quietened, dimly wondering when he'd last felt quite this terrible. Not for a long time, he thought. Not since before Blaze, before he'd gotten control of his power and it had had a tendency to backfire on him, turning his brain to mush and his muscles to jelly. Had it happened again?

"Get the charges ready," Gordon said lowly. "We'll destroy it before it has a chance to emerge."

He could hear the rest of the unit spread out, forming an arc around the broken cage. He could feel the vibrations in the floor, hear the clank of their armour, the scuffle of their boots, and he could hear their breathing. As his hands clenched involuntarily around the Emeralds his senses seemed to magnify a hundred fold. He could hear ten distinct patterns of breath; seven soldiers, Gordon, himself…and one more coming from the cage.

_Shadow_, he mouthed urgently, silently. _Wake up. _

The Emeralds seemed to be burning, but Silver couldn't figure out how to order his fingers to let them go, and suddenly his heightened senses picked up a change in the air. His fur pricked uncomfortably, and the lighting changed. The white glow of the metal seemed lighter and darker all at once, and there was a spine-chilling shriek of metal being torn once again. Maybe he hadn't managed to open the cage completely, but it didn't seem to matter. From amongst the wreckage, Silver saw a flicker of movement; black against black, so subtle he thought he imagined it

Gordon saw it too. "Open fire!"

"Wait," he croaked, but his voice was smothered by first barrage of gunfire. He lost the quiet sounds of breathing in the deafening ruckus, but his eyes somehow managed to follow the shape moving against the darkness.

_So fast_. Time had dimmed Silver's memory of just how fast it was. The bullets never had a chance to connect, and Silver saw the indistinct silhouette shoot out towards the nearest wall, hanging impossibly against gravity for a moment that seemed too long before shooting violently towards the nearest soldier.

Silver hissed in agony as he forced himself to sit up, but he was still far too slow to make a difference. The man collapsed with a startled yell, and pandemonium immediately ensued as the other soldiers realised the enemy was too close and their weapons were made useless unless they wanted to shoot at each other. The black blur didn't hesitate. The moment it was done with one target it shot to the next like a guided missile, and one by one the humans were falling.

It wasn't supposed to happen. Silver stared in horror, still struggling with vertigo to move and somehow make it _stop_, but he couldn't do anything but watch as the last soldier fell and the dark shape aimed for the General…but _missed!_ Gordon had spent most of his life surviving in their war-torn world, and despite his opponents' incredible speed he managed to duck and roll out of the way, his weapon rising in one smooth motion to bear on the dark shape just as it landed.

Shadow the hedgehog looked exactly as Silver remembered him, and his red eyes were narrowed to thin slits as he glared at Gordon. One leg bent minutely, the only warning Silver had to know that Shadow was going to leap again.

He stretched out desperately, his hand still closed around the chaos emerald. "Stop!"

Shadow froze in mid-air, his fur tinged with green from Silver's psychokinesis, but without the Chaos Emerald it wouldn't have worked. Even with its power could feel his strength failing rapidly, slipping away like sand through an hour glass. He dropped to one knee but doggedly refused to let go, Blaze's voice whispering encouragements in his ear. "Shadow, please…do you remember me?"

Shadow could still turn his head – even move his limbs because Silver's grip wasn't very secure – and his gaze locked unerringly on Silver but remained unreadable. If there was acknowledgement there, or even recognition, Silver couldn't tell.

Gordon, however, was not frozen, and paid Silver no heed. Silver saw the gun being raised even though his perception felt sluggish and his reactions all too slow. The second emerald felt like it weighed a ton and his arm ached to lift it. "General, no-!'

He'd intended to pull Gordon's gun from his hands but his weak tug only managed to disrupt its aim, and in the same instant Silver lost his hold on Shadow and knew he would never regain it.

_You have to push yourself Silver_, Blaze murmured quietly, her voice the echo of a nearly forgotten memory. _But not too far. _

He'd gone too far. Like over-stretching a muscle, when he taxed his powers too much it left him sore and aching for days, barely able to move. Only sheer will power kept him from falling on his face, but what happened next was difficult to follow.

Gordon was righting himself, with a reaction speed so impressive for a human it was almost supernatural, and Shadow had started to move again but this time with a different target in mind.

_The Emeralds_, Silver realised hazily. Once he got them, Shadow would be unstoppable.

Hands closed over his own, simultaneous with the end of that thought. It was already too late for Silver to move, but if there was one final defiance he could offer it was that he refused to let go. He forced himself to look up at Shadow, neck craned uncomfortably, and his last wild thought was that the red waves of power rippling through Shadow's fur looked eerily like the crimson colours of Iblis's flames as the black hedgehog spoke.

"_Chaos Contr-_"


	4. Chapter 4

**Author's Note:** New chapter! Remember, all feedback is welcome.

* * *

**Part 4**

He wondered how his skin could feel so hot, and yet he was still shivering all over. He groped blindly, searching for the companionable warmth that usually slept by his side and, when he failed to find it, opened his eyes blearily. The headache that had been haunting his uneasy sleep rose rudely to the surface, and Silver moaned discontentedly, palm grinding against his forehead.

_Never again_, he promised himself, but he was always horrible at keeping those self-imposed promises. He relied on his powers too much. Blaze had told him it was his weakness, but despite her determination to fix it he hadn't taken to the physical training as well as he had the mental kind. She was naturally faster, stronger and more agile than he had ever been, and it was only when using his powers to cheat that he could even compare.

At moments like this, though, he wished he had learned from her better. If his body was stronger, he might not have overwrought himself, or would at least be handling it better. As it was, he wanted to curl into a ball and not move until the pain went away, but awareness kept nagging at him and the echoing resonance in his palms that pulsed to the tempo of his migraine alerted him to the fact that his hands were empty.

He'd lost the Chaos Emeralds. _Blaze's Emeralds._ That was enough motivation to sit up and hope fruitlessly that they were still nearby, but doing so forced him to take notice of his surroundings and the realisation that he had no idea where he was.

The walls, the floor, the ceiling were all made of metal. The only thing that wasn't was the mattress he was currently lying on, but it was stripped of sheets or pillows and looked just as clinical and bare. It also smelled strongly of dust to the point where it invaded his nose offensively and make the air taste of it. There were no windows, only a door, and on the floor there was a clear trail where the dust had been disturbed leading from it to the bed.

Standing up did nothing for the pain in his head, and at the same time he noticed that something about the room was…strange. It gave him a swaying sense of vertigo, like the floor was moving. He shrugged it off, needing every inch of concentration he could muster to walk in a straight line. If the floor hadn't been so dirty he might have been temped to crawl instead.

Outside the door was a long corridor, just as empty as the room, with the same trail leading onward. The only light came from dim, flashing beacons low on the walls, and the encompassing darkness reminded him too much of the cavern in the volcano. The room was much brighter, and for a moment he was tempted just to stay where he was, curl up on the bed and go back to sleep, but his senses were tingling warningly. There was something dangerous here.

He followed the trail, wishing desperately to hear any sound but himself. The air was stale. His breath sounded harshly just with the effort of breathing, and the noise seemed to echo distortedly in his ears. Nervousness only made it faster and louder, and he hated the spike of helpless panic. Living under the tyranny of Iblis, he'd hoped that one day he would become immune to the fear. He fought it regularly, just to prove it had no hold over him, but there was a difference between a known opponent and the unknown darkness. He'd take the former any day.

The corridor ended at a large door, its pitted metal surface discouraging his approach. For a moment he worried that it would lock him in because there was no handle or obvious means of opening, but as he came near the ancient servos howled in protest and it very reluctantly parted before him. Only partway – enough for him to see that the trail he was following extended beyond it – and before he could think better of it he squeezed through the gap. As he staggered away it snapped shut like an iron jaw behind him, making him glad that it hadn't managed to bite off a limb.

The dust in this room was even thicker, prompting him to cough weakly and cover his mouth with one of his gloves. Blinking grit from his eyes, he ignored the trail in favour of the primary light source of the room; a window. Finally he'd be able to find out where he was. He knew the landmarks of Crisis City pretty well. There should be something out there that he'd recognise. Nearly tripping in the darkness, he stumbled unevenly towards it, slapping it with his palm as though he thought it would vanish like a mirage. The thick glass was reassuringly chill, offering a mild relief to his heightened temperature.

The first thing he noticed that, despite the perceived light, it was actually quite dark outside. Stars twinkled like distant spotlights, so much clearer than they normally were. He could almost believe that nothing could be wrong with the world when the sky looked like that, but then his eyes moved downward, looking for buildings or landmarks that he might recognise, and the sense of vertigo came back twice-fold as realised that there was nothing. Nothing but more sky and stars and a huge globe of mottled blue that couldn't possibly be what he thought it was.

He had to have both hands on the glass to keep steady, and he wasn't sure his breathing problems were just a matter of the dust now. "Wh-what…?"

"Planet Earth."

Silver turned so fast his vision swam, but Shadow was moving far more languidly. He came to stand near the window, but with a comforting space between them.

"I used to watch it from here, a long time ago." Shadow stared at the distant globe, his expression unreadable. "It looks different now."

Silver had seen pictures of the Earth on terminals still connected to the old information system. That Earth had been a clean blue and white of ocean and cloud…the Earth of now was barred by unhealthy black trails like a spreading infection. Silver had never been out of Crisis City. He'd never realised how damaged the planet really was.

"We're in space?" he asked weakly, feeling suddenly dizzy.

"This is the space colony ARK." Shadow looked at him sideways. "I'm surprised it's still here. I would have thought it might have been destroyed by now."

"I never knew…" He'd never even thought about what might be outside the atmosphere. "You couldn't even see the sky before."

His legs were starting to shake again, and he sat down, trying to keep up with all the frantic questions flashing through his mind when it was already so hard to think. At least it didn't seem like Shadow was doing anything threatening. "How did we get here?"

"I used Chaos Control to teleport us."

Memory of the fight came back with sudden clarity, hitting Silver like a slap. "The General! The humans, did you-?"

"I didn't kill them," Shadow said indifferently. "Though they would have deserved it for trying to shoot me."

"They just didn't understand," Silver tried to explain. "They thought you were some kind of weapon."

Shadow's reticence seemed to gain a new dimension of aloofness. Silver was too tired to try and decipher it. Finally Shadow turned to him and said, "I remember you. From Soleanna. You were trying to kill Sonic."

"I was tricked," Silver amended. "You showed me that."

"Yes," Shadow said, a frown passing briefly across his features. "That was nearly eight years ago for me, but you still look the same. This is the time you originally come from?"

"That's right." Silver blinked in surprise. "Eight years? But you were-"

"I don't age," Shadow said shortly. "And that doesn't include the time I was in stasis."

"Oh."

Silver wanted to ask about that, but Shadow's expression was forbidding. He was trying to think of a less damaging question when Shadow said, "It's you who broke open the cage. I felt your power in the chaos energy."

"Yeah…" He was still wondering if he would regret that decision. The way Shadow was staring at him so intently wasn't very comforting, but in the end Shadow looked away as though he'd come to some sort of decision.

"Then I owe you."

* * *

At some point while Silver had been sleeping again, a cup of water and a packet that announced itself to be some sort of ration had been placed on the short, functional table beside the bed. Silver descended on them both eagerly, even though the water was cloudy and tasted of chemicals and the ration was hard and stale. He'd had worse fare back in Crisis City.

"It was all I could find," Shadow said, nearly making Silver drop the tin mug in surprise. He hadn't noticed the black hedgehog leaning against the wall, and nervously wondered how long he'd been waiting there. Maybe he'd just been bored. The numbness in Silver's limbs and the merest trickle of power that suggested his powers were starting to return hinted that he'd been asleep for a long time. The headache had receeded too, much to his relief.

"Most of the supplies up here are gone," Shadow continued, oblivious to Silver's train of thought. "We'll have to return to the surface soon."

"I need to get back," Silver agreed, though not with much enthusiasm. Answering the General's questions was not going to be fun.

"What are you going to tell them?"

He'd explained some of the difficulty he'd had in opening the cage, trying to make sure there would be no hard feelings between Shadow and the soldiers. He wasn't quite sure what Shadow meant about 'owing' him. Silver didn't need anything, really, but he desperately wanted Shadow to come back to Rebirth City with him. If Shadow really had been in stasis for nearly two hundred years then he had nothing. Time would have destroyed everyone he'd known, and Rebirth was the only place Silver knew for starting again when you'd lost everything.

He determinedly ignored the thought that reminded him he'd never really felt like he'd belonged there; not without Blaze. Maybe Shadow would change that. They certainly had something in common, even if it was only a bizarre series of events.

What Shadow thought about it, he wasn't sure, but the other hedgehog kept giving him inscrutable looks.

"The truth," Silver said. "At least to Gordon. I don't think anyone else would believe it."

Shadow nodded. "Time travel is a difficult concept for most people, and for some reason it never worked again after the Princess of Soleanna was saved. Sonic and I tried more than once."

"Really?" Silver glanced at the two Emeralds. Shadow had returned them at Silver's request, although he'd pointed out at the time that Silver was in no condition to use them. That hadn't been Silver's intention. He just wouldn't have been able to sleep easily without knowing where they were. "I wonder if Mephiles had anything to do with it?"

Impossibly - because there was no wind aboard the space station - Silver could have sworn he felt a cool breeze on his back, like a shiver down his spine. Shadow looked grim. "I never saw _him_ again either."

"Neither did I," Silver admitted. "But Iblis is gone now."

He didn't like to dwell too much on that though. He touched one of the Emeralds, feeling the lingering trace of Blaze's warmth. "We should go. I don't want to keep them waiting."

"You don't have all your strength back yet," Shadow pointed out, sounding less concerned than simply factual.

"It doesn't matter," Silver said. "We'll be safe inside the city."

He hoped that was true. Taking an Emerald in each hand he held them out to Shadow beseechingly. Though Silver had used chaos control to open the time portals, his use of the skill was only instinctual and he didn't know how to use it to teleport. Shadow took them, but he didn't seem too happy about it. Silver couldn't blame him, after being shot at.

Skilfully balancing both Emeralds in one hand, Shadow grabbed Silver's arm, taking the pale hedgehog by surprise. Another unreadable glance. "I have to be touching you."

"Oh…right," Silver said, trying to dismiss the nervousness that could have been directed at either his uncertain homecoming or the fact that they were about to cross hundreds of miles of empty space to land blindly back on Earth. He hoped Shadow knew what he was doing.

Shadow raised the Emeralds, and from Silver's point of view it looked like a final salute to the bare walls of the ARK before light flashed around him and he felt the floor, the air, and finally his body disappear, with only Shadow's ghostly grip on his arm dragging his consciousness along.

Coming out of the teleport was like walking out of a fog, and as he blinked to clear his vision of the light the city seemed to rise up around him. Familiar walls of jagged stone, the heavy silence of watchful predators and the smell of ash. He sighed gratefully.

"Where is the city from here?" Shadow asked, handing the Emeralds back as Silver tried to regain his bearings. Even if he knew the city, it was unexpectedly disorienting to reappear in an unknown location with no context of the journey to get there. Shadow had set them down on one of the tallest buildings in the city though, and he could see the tip of Rebirth's communications tower in the distance.

"It's that way," Silver pointed, walking fearlessly to the crumbling ledge. Though his powers weren't strong yet he could use them to float down and to fly at least most of the way.

Shadow hadn't moved. Silver glanced back at him uncertainly. "Are you coming?"

It hadn't quite occurred to him until that point that Shadow might very well say no, but the other hedgehog stepped forward. "You lead, I'll follow, but it might be best if you enter the city alone until you've explained yourself."

He'd half hoped that Shadow would be with him for that, for moral support if nothing else. He drooped slightly. "I guess you're right." Glancing over the edge he asked, "Can you make it down?"

Shadow scoffed. "Just worry about yourself."

He leapt easily from the roof with the same kind of self-assured confidence Blaze had possessed. Part way during his fall he managed to align his legs against the building and skated straight downward, increasing his momentum even more. It was a move he'd seen Sonic perform too, at the ruins of Soleanna Castle.

Silver pouted slightly. "Speed isn't everything."

He allowed himself to fall, directing his power to surround him like a cloud, ready to catch him before he hit the ground, exalting in those few moments of unconstrained freefall. It had been a happy accident, early on in his training to discover that he could levitate himself, and from that point on he had been twice as determined to master his powers. The view wasn't necessarily better from up high, but at least for a while he wasn't anchored to the scarred earth that was always threatening to crumble…and Blaze had this particular smile that she tried not to let him see; proud of him for accomplishing it and proud of herself for teaching him to do it. Since they so rarely had reason to smile, he always tried to catch her at it.

It suddenly occurred to him that he hadn't seen Shadow smile at all in the whole time they'd known each other, and he couldn't at all picture the expression on him. There was always a tension on his face, like the precursor to a scowl that was covered by indifference.

When he went low enough to fly beside Shadow, skimming above the pavement and keeping pace in the air as he couldn't on the ground, he caught a brief glimpse of a stronger emotion on Shadow's face that made his chest tighten in understanding sympathy. He knew what despair looked like, but Shadow hid it quickly.

"Is the whole world like this?" Shadow asked lowly.

"I don't know," Silver admitted. "I've always been here, but I like to think there are parts of the world where Iblis's flames didn't reach…where it's more like your time."

"It's not my time anymore," Shadow muttered, his voice heavy with something Silver thought might be guilt.

He didn't know what to say, but the solid weight of the Emeralds gave him an idea. "Maybe we could try to send you back? I know you said it didn't work for you and Sonic, but-"

"No," Shadow said, sharply enough that Silver wavered in his flight, wondering if he should peel back, but Shadow's next words had a more apologetic note even though he wouldn't look at Silver. "There's nothing for me back then."

"Oh, but-?" He took another look at Shadow's downcast expression and changed his mind. "Uh, look! This is where the edge of the new city starts."

Shadow slowed his pace, and with some relief Silver pulled out of his flight and put his feet back on the ground, trying to keep his breathing under control. He knew he shouldn't be pushing himself already, but he hadn't wanted to hold Shadow back. He was no weakling.

"Are you sure you want to wait here?" Silver asked. "You could-"

Shadow stiffened, and Silver's own ears flattened at the sound of running footsteps. One of the guards had come down from the wall, gun clenched tightly to their chest as they sprinted towards the two hedgehogs. He was wondering whether he and Shadow would have to flee before getting a chance to explain, but the human skidded to a stop without moving to attack.

"Silver, thank goodness you're back! What happened? Where is the General?"

Silver's heart dropped. "He's not here?"

"No one else has come back yet."

Silver pressed an involuntary hand to his forehead as he tried to bully the memories in his head into some kind of order. Everything had been jumbled after using the Chaos Emeralds, but as he checked the sky he suddenly realised it was getting near dusk again even though it couldn't possibly have been the same day they'd left for the Volcano. He'd lost track up on that space station. That meant Gordon and his team had been out in the city more than twenty-four hours which was long enough to assume the worst.

Silver should never have left them…or he should have had Shadow bring him back much sooner. Recriminations for a hundred things he should have done differently flashed through his head.

"We got separated," he explained quickly. "But don't worry. I can find him."

"Silver," the Guard said nervously. "It's nearly dark. The General wouldn't want you to risk yourself."

It was all his fault. "I have to. Get back inside the walls. Make sure the city stays safe."

The last thing they needed was an attack on the walls while Gordon wasn't around. The guard seemed torn, but reluctantly gave a salute like he might have given the General. "Good luck."

Silver took off. He shouldn't still be using his powers, but it was faster than running and worry gave him new strength. He'd almost forgotten about Shadow until the black hedgehog was suddenly running beside him. At some point Shadow had just melted into the scenery without Silver noticing, and the guard must not have seen him at all or he would have commented. Hedgehogs weren't exactly common. At any other time he would have been more intrigued but thoughts of the General and his team were in the forefront of his mind.

"We should start looking where we left them," Shadow said without preamble. "I should be able to track them."

Silver nodded curtly, grateful that Shadow was apparently going to aid him without question. "We'll have to be careful. The creatures hunt at night."

If anyone could have survived a night stranded in the city, it was Gordon, but somehow that didn't fill him with the confidence it should have.


	5. Chapter 5

**Author's Note:** This part has given me all kinds of merry hell, but even if it didn't come out like I wanted it to I think I shall stop procrastinating and post it. But, um, yay for moar fic?

Especially for this chapter, comments and suggestions are welcome.

**Edit:** A few small changes have been made to this chapter and over-all I'm happier with it. Thanks to Red Atlas for the advice they gave me!

* * *

**Part 5**

The truck was gone, and there was no sign of the General or anyone else, but Silver wasn't sure if that was a good thing or not. He took a moment to lean against a heat-warped lamp post and just breathe for a minute while Shadow examined the minimal tracks left in the dust.

"They went this way." Shadow pointed to a road that Silver knew would have eventually led the team home. Why they hadn't made it, he wasn't sure. Even if they'd chosen to hole up for the night they should have made it back during the day. It was impossible to think that the General would have gotten lost, which meant that they must have run into trouble.

"Then let's keep going," Silver said, pushing away from the post with effort.

Shadow seemed to be eyeing him critically. "We'll need to move slower. Our light's almost gone. We might lose the trail."

Only the tips of the tallest building were still basking in the dull orange light of the sun. Everything below that line was bathed in darkness, and even though Shadow had a point Silver couldn't help but feel like it was making allowances for his own weakness. He hated feeling this helpless, but there was no choice.

He closed his eyes and conceded. "Alright."

Even though he wasn't as fast as Shadow on the ground, he could keep up a swift jog for as long as he needed to. It was the one thing Blaze had insisted on, because there was never a situation that couldn't be made worse by being too tired to run.

There wasn't much of a trail to follow, but Shadow seemed to have some kind of supernatural sense to aid them, and it was enough to tell Silver that the team hadn't been diverted. They followed the road in silence as the buildings around them started to stir with the quiet sounds of life. Silver heard the rustle of leathery wings from an underground parking lot, and there was a far-off snarl, a clear warning for any to avoid that territory.

Silver imagined that the team must have faced exactly this situation the night before – racing the sun to get to safety – and as they rounded the next corner Silver suddenly realised why they hadn't made it. A huge section of street had been ripped apart, the asphalt laying cracked and jagged, and with giant holes to name the culprit. The worms had been here. There was no easy path around without extensive backtracking, and the truck couldn't have made it across. It was parked, abandoned on the side of the road; empty.

Silver stood at the edge of the ruined road. "They must have gone on foot."

"This looks recent," Shadow murmured softly, nudging the damage with his heel. Silver had also concluded that, but tried not to dwell on it. The team had been heavily armed, and they had done fine in the Volcano, plus Gordon knew ambushes better than anyone.

Picking his way over the broken ground was hard, and after stumbling more than once in the dark from his lack of attention Silver gave in and cheated, floating the rest of the way. Shadow didn't falter even once, hopping agilely and quickly over the hazard, but once on the other side his expression wasn't promising as he scrutinised the ground.

"Their trail's not clear anymore," he reported. "There's more than one set of tracks here. Some might have been from those creatures."

Humans on foot were far easier to stalk. Silver tried to think of which path the team would have taken, and chose his direction on nothing but hope and instinct. "We'll go this way."

The sky had faded from orange to blue, the final state before true darkness came. His own fur stood out like a beacon in the vestigial light, but Shadow was nearly invisible beside him. If he strained he could see the crimson stripes swaying in rhythm as Shadow skated smoothly over the rough ground.

Silver's head was starting to hurt again, and it felt like his shadow was an anchor he had to drag behind him. He was sure they had to be close, but behind them he suddenly heard the echo of footfalls mingling with their own. The creatures were awakening.

The slight change in Shadow's gait made Silver think he was looking behind. "We should get rid of them."

"They'll just keep coming," Silver said. "If we don't give them an opportunity they might not attack."

"They've already got it," Shadow informed him. "There's another group ahead of us."

Silver hadn't noticed that. He misstepped, but righted himself quickly, frustration warring with exhaustion. "Then I guess we don't have a choice."

He still had the Emeralds. After a moment of thought he gave one to Shadow. "Here. You might need this."

Its light illuminated Shadow's face for a moment, revealing a curious expression – like being reunited with an old friend. "I'll take the ones in front. You take the ones behind."

He didn't wait for Silver's consent as he picked up speed, racing towards whatever lurked ahead. Silver didn't mind, his own head too foggy to think of anything better, and he slowed to a stop and cast around for a suitable weapon. The cars looked too heavy, but there was one of those rusted stands that sometimes held the rotten remains of out-dataed newspapers, and a piece of cracked pavement gave him two decent chunks of concrete to use. He pulled them all towards him, arranging them around him in a loose circle, like a shield. His power made them glow softly, all the better to draw the creatures to him.

The first attack nearly caught him by surprise. There were two breeds of the four-legged predators that roamed the city in packs. The most common looked like they had crawled from the molten scourge left by Iblis's flames, and they had a distinctive glow that made them easy to see. The second kind had much darker skin, the colour of twilight, and it was one of these that lunged forward out of the dark. The newspaper-box smashed into it, sending it rebounding against a wall, but Silver didn't have a chance to confirm that it didn't rise again before he was fending off two more.

This breed was the more dangerous. They were smarter, tougher, and instead of flame they emitted a much more focused jet of heat from their mouths, like the beam of a laser. Silver couldn't afford to let them get close, and gave ground readily as he brought his remaining two weapons to bear.

The one on the left made an unwise lunge, perhaps sensing the weakness of its prey, but Silver brought the concrete down hard on its back and pinned it to the ground. In the same motion he swung the second slab towards the other creature, hoping to finish the fight quickly by aiming at its head. It spat laser, and the concrete turned to powder in his psychic grip. Silver stumbled back, casting around for another weapon on the empty street. The creature didn't hesitate, bounding towards him, and the best Silver could do was raise his hands and hope he could stop its momentum before it crashed into him.

The booming crack of gunfire split the night. The creature hissed in agony as its lower half collapsed and it fell only two paces from Silver's foot. He blinked, looking around bewilderedly, and found a light moving frantically a short distance away. "Over here!"

His legs and his brain seemed to be having some kind of dispute on how to run. He staggered in the direction of the light, nearly fell, but suddenly there was a disembodied hand on his arm, dragging him along.

"Get moving," Shadow's voice grunted, and under his influence Silver's legs finally figured out what they were supposed to be doing.

He belatedly recognised the soldier in the doorway as the woman who had pointed her gun at him the day before. "Inside," she ordered curtly, aiming blindly at the darkness as she set aside her lantern. Once they were through she and another soldier heaved against the heavy shelf they had wedged behind the door to fortify it.

Silver felt he should be helping, but for a moment all he could do was lean against Shadow. The black hedgehog hadn't let him go – probably for the best since Silver was wavering quite noticeably. He still hadn't recovered from overstraining himself the first time. Exhaustion had caught up all too suddenly, but he had to know. "The General-?"

Something heavy crashed into the door. Wood splintered, and the large case rocked dangerously until the two soldiers threw their weight against it. They all held their breaths, but there was no further assault even though the creatures could be heard growling just beyond the barrier. The soldier who had let them in turned her scathing glare toward them, and Silver suddenly realised that her gun was still cockled like she intended to use it. Shadow was unnaturally still beside him, coiled with a tension that Silver could feel.

"Tell me why I shouldn't just shoot you," she said in a deadly quiet voice. "You know what happens to renegades."

Silver winced. He did know. Though most everyone realised they had to band together for survival there were a few lost souls who thought they could do better for themselves. Those who stole and killed to take for their own benefit, or the ones who lost their minds to dispair and somehow thought the creatures could be reasoned or bargained with at the expense of their own kind…and he supposed if the soldiers believed as Gordon did, that Shadow was some kind of mindless weapon, that his defence of the black headgehog must seem simmilar.

Renegades didn't last long. Gordon's people had a particular distaste for them, likening them to parasites that preyed off the community, or as madmen who should be put out of their own misery before others were sacrificed.

"Wait, please." Silver raised his hands hurriedly in submission, eyeing the barrel of her gun with understandable caution. He wouldn't be able to convince his tired body to dodge even if it were possible at this range. "The General never gave me a chance to explain-"

"Of course he didn't," she snapped. "Do you know what you've done? That thing is a Z-class military weapon, and it-"

"I'm not a 'thing'," Shadow interrupted, eyes narrowed, and though his voice was only a short step away from open hostility it seemed to give her pause. She honestly didn't seem to have expected him to talk, and as she gaped he added, "And if you hadn't decided to shoot at me before asking questions than maybe you wouldn't be here."

As if to grive home his words, there was another resounding impact against the door. The case wobbled warningly and a small spray of grit and dust fell from the rotting ceiling. The soldier was scowling as she thought, but her weapon hadn't lowered even though her team mate seemed less certain. His gun was drawn but pointing harmlessly towards the ceiling, his open gaze on Silver clearly saying he wanted to believe that there was some kind of explanation.

"This is Shadow. He's-" Silver hesitated, not quite sure how to classify what Shadow was in a way that was both truthful and unalarming. In the end he settled for more of the latter. "An old friend."

Shadow said nothing and didn't look at him, but that wasn't an objection as far as Silver was concerned, and he stoutly continued, "He came to help me look for you. We're here to help."

As much as he had always felt undeserved of it, he was suddenly thankful for the reputation of his fight against Iblis. He didn't know any of the soldiers personally, not like he did Gordon, but they all knew of him. Even if he had disobeyed their Commander, even if he had put the team at risk, he could see them weighing those deeds against all the good he had done. Shadow's presence obviously made them wary but the tension in the room eased slightly.

The soldier holstered her weapon with careful deliberation. "I don't have the authority to decide if your actions were justifiable or not, but right now we need all the help we can get. You'll have to explain yourself to the General later."

It was a task he was not looking forward to. Gordon was harsh with people who stepped out of line, and positively vindictive against renegades. Silver suspected it had something to do with the way the human malitia had disintegrate after the battle with Iblis. "Where is he?"

"In the back," she said, her voice clipped with censored emotion. "We lost three of the team though. The creatures ambushed us last night, and kept us pinned in this position. We have too many wounded, and couldn't risk travelling even in the day."

Even thought she reported it blandly, Silver felt the note of an accusation. Sobered, he turned away. "I'm sorry."

There was a terse pause where she adjusted her weapon to rest more easily on her dhoulder. "Go see the medic. You look like you're about to fall over."

It was nothing that the medic could fix, but Silver limped miserably towards the back, knowing a dismissal when he head one. Shadow stayed silent, but kept a steadying grip on his arm.

The back room smelled like blood and mould. The remaining members of the team were here, curled up under improvised blankets in a way that made it unclear how many were sleeping and how many were hurt. In one case, though, it was obviously the latter, and Silver pulled away from Shadow to kneel at Gordon's side. "No…"

The smell of charred flash was a little too familiar. One side of Gordon's face was swathed in red splattered gauze, and his arm on the same side was curled awkwardly across his chest, misshapen by the bandages. Silver felt sick but forced himself to look, to try and gauge how much of the burn was superficial and how much was crippling. His eye might be gone. That arm might never work again.

"He took it the worst," the medic said quietly, coming up beside him. "The wounds won't be fatal if we get him back to the city soon. Otherwise…"

Silver knew what happened when infection set in. "Right, we should…"

When he needed it the most, his mind failed him. It was like running face first into a brick wall. He was exhausted, too tired to think of anything but how heavy he felt and how hopeless it looked. The creatures would keep them locked in the building until dawn, and even after that they might linger if they thought there was a meal to be had. There were too many injured to escape quickly, and Gordon would be in agony if they tried to move him. Silver couldn't even hope to lift him, as weak as his powers were, and taking the time to rest would be wasting moments they could be getting the team to safety.

He didn't know what to do, but Shadow saved him. "I can get him back to the city using Chaos Control."

Silver looked up, painfully hopeful. "You could?"

"He needs medical attention," Shadow said. "It's the quickest way."

Only Shadow could make saving someone's life sound like an exercise in efficiency, but as long as he was willing to help Silver couldn't care less. He offered his own Chaos Emerald with a silent apology to Blaze. "Could you take everyone? I don't want anyone to stay out here longer than they have to."

Shadow took the Emerald deliberatively. "It'll take a few trips."

"What are you doing?" The female soldier from the door had her mouth set in a hard line. Silver hastily outlined the plan, throwing pleading glances at Shadow to look as trustworthy as possible. He wasn't sure how much weight his own words held at the moment.

"It's the quickest way," he finished earnestly. "Shadow knows what he's doing, and no one will be at risk."

"Except from him," she said acidly. Even if she was giving Silver the benefit of the doubt, that didn't extend to Shadow.

"Provided you don't try to shoot me again," Shadow countered coolly, "I don't have any reason to harm you."

Shadow and the Soldier glowered at each other silently for a moment before she relented with a quiet growl.

"Fine, but I'm going with you there and back on the first trip."

"Whatever," Shadow said, crouching by Gordon's side.

The Soldier gave Silver a look, and he nodded as firmly as he could manage. "I'll keep an eye on everyone here."

She seemed at least marginally reassured. "Alright, then," she murmured, clenching her gun tighter. "Let's do this."

Silver stepped back to watch, not having seen the teleport from the outside. His fur prickled with the rising hum of Chaos, and at the last moment he had to shield his eyes from the glare, but it blinked out just as suddenly as it had come with a brief rush of air that moved to fill the vacuum of space.

The Medic, who'd stood back and watched the proceeding without interference, remarked softly, "You'd better be right about him. The General said that hedgehog was the reason the original army was so weak before Iblis came. They'd wasted all their resources trying to seal him, and now he's free."

"He must be wrong," Silver said, moving back against the wall. "No one knows what happened before Iblis now. Those records were lost."

"There's still the stories. You remember the five disasters, right? What about the tale of the black creatures?"

Silver knew the five disasters, just like everyone of their time did. The five shattering events that had weakened the world before the coming of Iblis…but they were just stories. Fables, anecdotes really, told mostly to children to teach the harsh lessons of the past. Silver had been fascinated by them once, always trying to learn more about Iblis and where it had come from, but once he'd gotten older he'd stated to realise that any truth there might once have been to them wouldn't have survived the passage of time. Stories were always embellished with each retelling.

But hadn't there been a story about a lost colony in space that had somehow caused the ruination of the moon? He thought of the ARK and its dusty, dead passages. Maybe Shadow would know about the disasters, but Silver didn't really want to broach the subject. He knew, more or less, how Iblis had come to be freed. Nothing else mattered.

Right?

Shadow was taking too long. Silver didn't have anything to gauge the time except his growing restlessness, but surely if everything had gone well they would be back by now. Maybe he should have gone with them instead. Maybe Gordon hadn't travelled well during the teleport, or maybe the people at the City hadn't accepted Shadow's aid and had turned on him. He wasn't sure who that would work out worse for, and even though his body objected to movement he couldn't sit still.

He was just considering risking his taxed powers to fly across the city to find out what was happening when the tingle of Chaos returned to the room, giving him a few seconds warning before they returned; Shadow looking unruffled, if a bit annoyed, and the Soldier hunched over as if she were about to be sick.

Silver approached her, concerned. "Hey, are you alright?"

"Fine," she rasped, waving him off. He guessed it might have something to do with the vertigo of teleporting, but then he hadn't found it that bad. After a moment she collected herself, and pointed at two other soldiers who hadn't woken while Silver had been there, and who had been under the Medic's watchful eye. "Take them next."

Shadow shot her a glare that went unseen, and Silver tried to soften the impact of her order by catching his attention with a soft touch on Shadow's arm and an appeasing expression. A silent, rapid-fire exchange passed between them so quickly Silver wasn't even exactly sure that had been said, but Shadow turned abruptly and moved to do as he'd been asked. Silver breathed a minute sigh of relief.

"How's the General?" he asked the soldier tentatively.

"We got him to the infirmary. They're sure he'll live, at least." She straightened imperceptibly, not looking at him. "He asked about you."

Something in his chest seemed to twist, but he was too drained to even interpret what it meant. "I'll…Tell Shadow to take me last. I'll stand guard just in case."

He was tired of trying to think, but knew he couldn't afford to sleep yet. Hoping that having something productive to do would keep him focused, he went to watch the barricaded entrance. Every so often it would rattle ominously, and outside the creatures snarled their frustration for the prey they could smell but could not touch. It should have been alarming enough to keep him alert, but Silver soon found that he had to sit when his legs wouldn't support him. From there he fought long and hard not to lie down, but when the heavy gloom seemed like a comforting blanket it was a losing battle. He felt himself sink into comforting, oblivious darkness.

And he dreamed.

There was a rustling in his ears that he thought must be trees – the kind that his future didn't have, but like he'd seen in the past in the huge, alien forests of Soleanna. He'd liked that noise, so peaceful, except the one he was hearing wasn't quite like it. It was sharper, _angrier_. Instead of trees it was the staccato beat of gunfire, and he cringed, for a moment feeling the rough floor underneath him and nearly touching wakefulness before being sucked back into the dream.

Gunfire turned to screams. The screams of rage, of pain, of grief. The sort of chilling wails that haunted the city with echoes for days on end, but quickly enough they died down to whispers. Ugly, twisted, desperate things. He wished he could block them out, but he didn't seem to have a body in this dream. Just an awareness that floated on a sea of nothing.

_…gone, gone, gone, everyone's gone…why does it hurt so much…when does it end…why won't it stop…why…_

Parts of the nothing around him formed into a ghostly silhouette of the city, backlit by the colour of flames. He could feel the heat even here, and all around him the voices muttered and pleaded and cried, and he knew that even thought he couldn't hear those voices when he was awake they were there. Like a stain invisible to the naked eye, and no matter that Iblis was gone, the Earth was bruised too deeply to heal. Like a rotten apple infested with maggots, the creatures would pick at the leftovers of civilisation until there was nothing left, or until the earth itself rotted away to nothing.

Inside the dream Silver had a moment of perfect clarity and realised that it didn't matter that Iblis was gone. Blaze's sacrifice was for nothing.

_Not nothing_, a voice argued. _What she left behind…_

The Chaos Emeralds rose up from the endless darkness, and just seeing them eased Silver's mind. The frantic wraiths of the shadow-city went silent, and in their absence he could hear the murmur of Blaze's voice wishing him good luck.

_The power you need_, the voice promised, barely louder than a breath but for some reason Silver flinched as though it had been shrieked in his ear, and the jolt brought him back to disorientated wakefulness. When he rubbed the grit from his eyes he was surprised to find his gloves came away wet, and he quickly scrubbed away any trace of it.

He missed her so badly it hurt like a sucker punch, and instinctively he reached out and found the Emeralds had been placed beside his head. He touched them hesitantly. "Shadow?"

There was a slight shuffle of movement across the room. It was quiet outside now, and Silver's instincts told him it was just past dawn. Shadow must have finished transporting the soldiers and chosen not to wake him. Silver sat up, cradling the Emeralds in his lap.

"Someone told me," he began, "that when you bring all the Chaos Emeralds together a miracle happens."

Shadow said nothing, but Silver didn't think that was a dismissal.

"I think we need that miracle here. It wasn't enough just to get rid of Iblis. We need to find some way to fix the damage here, or the city will never be safe."

Hope was so fragile. Rebirth City would be in shambles with its leader wounded, but Silver could go back to them yet. Not until he had some real salvation to offer them.

"I'm going to find them," he swore to the silently howling voices of the city. If the Emeralds really could perform a miracle than he was sure it would put them finally to rest.

"I'll come with you," Shadow told him, his tone impossible to read.

"You don't owe me anything," Silver said, meaning it. "You don't have to come."

"You'll need me if you want to find them," Shadow said, and that was apparently the end of the argument. "Go back to sleep. You'll need your strength."

He wasn't quite sure what he'd expected from Shadow, but knowing that he wouldn't have to go alone made him miss Blaze a little less. He lay back down and went to sleep, remembering her last smile and her hope for the future.


	6. Chapter 6

**Author's Note:** Sorry for the delay! D: I've been co-currently trying to do some advanced work on the chapter after this (because that's when all the fun starts) and the chapter before this (because now I've got a pretty good idea on how to fix it in a way that won't require lots of rewriting) and it'd been slow...but thank you to everyone who left a review! I loves me some feedback.

* * *

**Part 6**

Tiny beams of light were peeking through the barricaded windows of the storeroom, and Shadow forced himself to stand in their path even though it hurt his eyes to do so. Sooner or later they would leave, and he wanted his sight adjusted to the brightness so he wouldn't be blinded by the outside. So far this city had proven itself to be untrustworthy and vicious…so not much had changed in two centuries.

Perhaps that was an unfair assessment, but he had no real desire to change his mind. He was pretty sure this area had once been Central City, and that place held enough unpleasant experiences to deserve his scorn.

Shadow had always been quick to adapt. It had made him a prized field agent and a matchless survivor, but even so it was a little difficult to reconcile the idea that I_this_/I was the world now. His world; the one he was supposed to have saved or destroyed, depending on who you asked. In the end he had done neither. He had merely slept obliviously though all its trials, its battles and its losses.

A spark of red lightning rippled across his fur and he irritably suppressed it. He cast a glance at Silver but the pale hedgehog didn't even stir at the accidental flash of power.

Shadow wondered if it was really coincidence that Silver had been the one to free him. With the exception of his one-time amnesia, Shadow had a good memory, and he recalled that first meeting with clarity. Silver, whose strange manner had clearly marked him as time displaced even if Shadow hadn't recognised the distinctive ozone-scent he'd possessed as matching the burned city that Mephiles had tried to exile him to. Silver, who had managed to use Chaos Control by instinct and desperation, just like Sonic had.

He had to remind himself that it was futile to wonder what had happened to Sonic, or any of the others. Maybe they had fought Iblis and failed. Maybe they'd been dead long before the creature had even been released.

It was better to focus on the present. Shadow worked best when he had a purpose in mind, and with Silver he had one. He might not have had a personal interest in the city, but despite what Silver had said, Shadow still owed him. Transporting the solders was child's play, and hardly comparable to being freed from an eternity of containment. That Silver had been given plenty of reasons not to do so, and that he had obviously suffered for it in his failure to the humans only made it more meaningful.

It had taken a physical toll as well, judging from Silver's current deep sleep and the uncharacteristic weakness of the day before. Shadow was not entirely surprised. He could speculate at what kind of defences they'd put on the cell to keep him contained. He was actually impressed that Silver had managed the feat with only two Emeralds, though his imperfect mastery of their power had cost him.

Silver would recover though. Shadow would be around to ensure it; an easy resolve to make. He would keep Silver safe until the Emeralds were found, and then…

He wasn't sure what he would do next, and was content enough not to think about it. Thoughts of the past and the future could wait until he regained his equilibrium and figured out what he wanted his real purpose to be. It wasn't too late to try and save the world…and it wasn't too late to decide to destroy it, either.

* * *

Silver was certain that Shadow was setting the leisurely pace entirely for his benefit, and wasn't sure if he should be bristling or grateful for the consideration. Even trying to walk a little faster was pointless, because Shadow stoutly refused to be rushed and only gave Silver blankly indifferent looks as he slowly caught up when Silver was forced to stop and wait for him. Eventually he admitted defeat and stopped trying.

"I don't think we'll make it out of the city before dark," he said eventually after doing the calculations in his head, revelling that simple I_thinking_/I didn't pain him anymore. "But I know a place we can stay on the outskirts."

Shadow made a noise of agreement, but didn't speak. His gaze was fixed on some point over the horizon, the same direction he'd claimed to sense an Emerald from. Silver wondered how he could be so precise. He could feel the two Emeralds they already had – their presence a low, reassuring purr in the back of his mind – but he couldn't imagine sensing anything beyond that. Still, Shadow seemed to know far more about the Emeralds than he chose to reveal. Actually, if Silver concentrated on the feeling, Shadow's presence kind of felt like a Chaos Emerald as well. It had the same sort of resonance to it. The oxymoron of controlled chaos.

This oddity kept him well distracted from the other things he didn't want to be thinking about, like the fact that he'd never actually left the boundary of the city before and was a little bit apprehensive about what they would actually find out there. It was possible that Crisis City was the epicentre of the world's decimation, and things outside would be better…or perhaps it was the only place left that had survived and everything beyond it would be deadlands, with no food or water to sustain them. He couldn't be sure. Even the most isolated nomads who had come to Rebirth had lived within eyesight of the city's ruined silhouette.

He also didn't want to think about what the survivors must be saying about him now. He was abandoning them, not for good, but at a time when his presence would surely be needed to protect the city. Silver would do that gladly, but a part of him didn't feel worthy of the security of Rebirth's walls and the rest would have chafed to be stuck there now that he knew there was more he could be doing to save the city.

He wasn't quite ready to admit to cowardice about not speaking to the General just yet. To have to look at those injuries and have to acknowledge that they were his fault…and then most likely be declared a renegade which felt like a knife twisting in his heart every time he considered it. He might not have ever really felt like a part of the human's community but at least it was something.

Silver tried not to focus on the sounds the city seemed to be making around them. This had been his home for as long as he could remember. While there was nothing comfortable about the place, it should have been familiar enough to put him at ease, but not today. The smell of smoke was strong as if Iblis were still lurking nearby, and the wind seemed twice as fierce, and below the creaking and sighing of the unsteady buildings he could swear he was hearing things. Whispers. Voices. It seemed to lessen when he stuck closer to Shadow, possibly because the other hedgehog's serious demeanour was the anthesis of fanciful notions like ghosts.

All in all, he wasn't having a very successful time at keeping his mind clear. Blaze would have scolded him by now. She could always read his inner turmoil from his face, but even though she'd berate him for it, she was always there to listen and advise.

Silver missed having her to talk to. In the months since she'd been gone, only Gordon had treated him without that particular brand of awe that everyone else in Rebirth held, but he couldn't talk to the General quite the same way. The man was already burdened with the concerns of the whole town. Silver hadn't wanted to add to that load, and there had been no one else.

Now there was Shadow, and Silver tried to be subtle about studying him. It was difficult to gauge Shadow's state of mind. He didn't speak when he didn't have to, and gave off an impression of cold dismissal, but Silver had known plenty of people who were just as reticent and guarded. Crisis City was full of them; the bitter survivors, the desperate scavengers, the aloof loners who lived on the fringes, and Silver had never let himself be put off by them. Not everyone had kept hope like he and Blaze had. It was just another sign that the two of them had needed to try harder.

"Have you travelled much before?" Silver asked, hoping that a tentative question about Shadow's past wouldn't be stepping on a verbal land mine. "I've never been outside the city."

The pause was just long enough for him to wonder if Shadow was too busy staring into space to hear him, but finally he said, "I have. We'll need to pick up some supplies before we leave. Food and water. Do you know where we can get them?"

"Yeah." The shelter he had in mind for spending the night was near an old shopping complex. It was an excellent place to forage for food if you didn't mind taking your chances with unmarked packages, and there were half a dozen places where water still ran that probably wouldn't be toxic. Blaze always had a better nose for that kind of thing, but Silver could manage.

"Tell me what you know about the terrain outside the city," Shadow said, his voice clipped with that same military precision that the General sometimes used. "I need to know what to expect."

"It's pretty barren," Silver told him, thinking back to every shred of gossip he'd heard and what little he knew himself. "I've flown high above the city and in every direction there's nothing but bare rock. In some places you used to be able to see lava flowing from cracks in the earth. A lot of it is unstable, but that might have changed since Iblis has been gone. I don't know what's beyond that. How far do we have to go?"

Shadow focused inward, calculating the strength of his awareness of the Emerald. "About five hundred miles."

Silver looked aghast. That seemed like an impossibly long distance. "That's going to take us a long time."

Shadow shot him a look. "Hopefully we won't be walking for all of it."

"Oh." Silver felt sheepish. "Probably not."

He was trying to figure out how quickly his powers were recovering, and what sort of distance they might be able to cover in a day's travel when Shadow unexpectedly asked, "You say you've never left the city…how come?"

Silver blinked, caught off guard. "Iblis was here. Every time he regenerated it was always in the city. I had to stay here to defeat him."

"But after," Shadow said impatiently. "The humans at that camp said Iblis has been gone for months."

"Well, I…" Truthfully, any aspiration he'd had to travel had left him when Blaze had. Maybe once upon a time he'd speculated about seeing the rest of the world, or what was left of it, but he had no desire to do it by himself…but he didn't want to talk about Blaze.

"The city needed me," he finished uncertainly, and it didn't take any great skills of observation to read the dubiousness in Shadow's glance. "What?"

After regarding him coolly for a moment, Shadow glanced away. "It's nothing."

So they both had things they didn't want to talk about. Silver sighed deeply, and the walk thereafter was quiet with contemplation.

* * *

The time spent in stasis had left Shadow without any desire to sleep, possibly never again, if he had any say over the matter. He'd never really needed to anyway, except when he was weakened or injured, and so far he was neither although the two days he'd been awake had passed impossibly slower than the last two centuries. Time was a fickle thing.

Silver seemed to expect him to rest though, and thus Shadow forced himself to lay still and wait for dawn so as not to disturb him. Silver had curled into a ball and gone back to sleep almost immediately, but instead of collapsing to exhaustion, Shadow felt this one was a healthier sleep. By tomorrow he should be able to manage a faster pace; an idea which Shadow approved of. He wasn't like Sonic, taking joy in the sheer accomplishment of speed, but Shadow was ready to I_run_/I. Even during the days when he'd been most shackled by his past, running had felt like freedom, and he craved that once again.

They were actually better off in supplies than Shadow had expected to be, given the general ruination of the city. He would have thought most of the food would be long gone, but as Silver had sadly pointed out, there were many less people left in this time. Not so many mouths to feed.

He'd seen a few of them at a distance. Wide eyes, fearful creatures, regarding the hedgehogs with open distrust as they fiercely cradled whatever inane prizes they'd managed to scavenge that day. Shadow would have pitied them if he could have brought himself to feel anything at all. He had no connection here.

Except perhaps through Silver, but the pale hedgehog was still an enigma that Shadow had yet to figure out. Very different from Sonic, who Shadow had pegged almost immediately as being brash, overconfident and inadequate. He'd only been wrong about that last one, though some days it seemed not so much.

And though his fur colour rather painfully reminded him of her, Silver was nothing at all like Rouge. Her assured, independent and occasionally self-serving nature was nearly the complete opposite of Silver's, and left Shadow without much frame of reference with which to understand him.

Despite the years of Rouge's careful influence, she hadn't really been able to teach Shadow how to understand people like she did. He was too different; the Ultimate Lifeform was a species unto himself, but she hadn't accepted that excuse and had never stopped trying. Eventually, she'd told him, he would have to do without her, be it on a mission that required a little diplomacy instead of just a show of power, or simply the inevitable fact that he was immortal and she was not.

In the end, she was right, which didn't make him any happier now than it had then, but once, in deadly seriousness she had informed him that he would have to find others after she was gone. Because the worst fate, she had said while looking through him piercingly in that way only she could, was to spend your life alone.

He wasn't sure if it was his own well being or the worlds' which had prompted that remark. Certainly, if not for the people he had almost been willing to call friends, he would have cared less about its fate. Then again, it might have had more to do with the downcast way she'd returned from Angel Island shortly beforehand. He'd chosen not to ask what had transpired between herself and the Guardian.

An any case, he felt like he owed it to her to take that advice to heart. Silver would be no replacement, but at least they could come to some sort of understanding so Shadow didn't feel like he was entirely adrift in the world. He didn't quite trust what his own reaction would be when it finally sunk in that once again he had been helpless to save the people who had meant most to him.


	7. Chapter 7

**Author's Note:** Sorry for the delay on this chapter! RL things, you know how it is. I've also gone back and made a few small changes to chapters 5 and 6 and am now a lot happier with both, but nothing in the overall storyline has changed so rereading isn't nessesary unless you want to.

* * *

**Part 7**

The wall around Crisis City must have come from the time before Iblis, because it served no obvious purpose against an enemy who could burrow beneath the Earth. To all appearances it hadn't been maintained at all in the last two centuries. It served now as only a reminder of the boundary of the city, and as a marker for any who dared go beyond it. Names, messages and warnings were carved or painted on its surface by people long gone. Explorers hoping to find a better life, or the desperate just hoping to escape the flames.

"Just wait a minute," he asked Shadow, and using a fragment of sharp rock and pressing hard against the tarnished metal, he carved his own name. He wondered if anyone from Rebirth would find it and carry word back to the city.

Shadow looked impatient, but also curious, and Silver explained, "It's tradition," and offered his rock to the other hedgehog.

Shadow seemed to consider, but shook his head. "I don't like to leave a trail behind me."

Silver found that an odd sentiment, but then he supposed that the survivors in Crisis City had nothing to fear from markers. Neither Iblis nor the creatures would ever notice them, but Shadow might have had enemies in his own time who would. There must have been some for him to have been sealed in that cage.

The wall was no real impediment to anyone who wanted to leave. It had plenty of gaps, some made intentionally and others just torn as the earth below had shifted, but Shadow didn't leave immediately. Instead he vaulted upward to stand on the top, taking stock of the road ahead. A little tentatively, he took hold of his own body with his powers and followed, floating gently upward.

He might not have been quite at his best, but he'd finally gotten more than a faint whisper of his strength back. Even if sleeping on the hard ground of the bolthole hadn't been as soft as the mattress on the ARK, it was infinitely more familiar. With the Emeralds at his side and even Shadow's wary presence nearby, it was almost as good as having Blaze there. He didn't think he'd slept quite since before she'd left. Today he wasn't going to hold them back, that was for certain.

It was almost cold on top of the wall, with the wind blowing hard and the sky a dull, unpromising grey. Silver set down on the uneven ledge behind Shadow and immediately noticed the tension in the other hedgehog's stance. He suddenly regretted not softening the blow of the outside world more than he had, and was tempted to reach out and touch Shadow's arm but had a feeling it would only cause that tension to snap.

He remembered Shadow's time; so green, so full of life. Even the harsh, dry desert had been beautiful to his eyes. His world probably came as an unpleasant shock.

"The sky was smothered in smoke for years," he said quietly, approaching Shadow as much as he dared. "Nothing could grow here."

The outlands were barren, riven with cracks and completely devoid of live or feature. The earth looked scorched from all the soot that had fallen from above, colouring it black. Even after the sky had cleared nothing had been able to flourish, and there was only a few patches of rock to break up the monotony of bleak emptiness. It was why few people had tried to leave the city in Silver's lifetime. As far as the eye could see, there was nothing that looked like hope out there.

But hope was not always easy to find, and somewhere the Chaos Emeralds waited for them.

"Shadow?" he prompted softly, not wanting to break the black hedgehog from his thoughts, but lingering here wouldn't do them any good. Dwelling on things that couldn't be changed was counter-productive, or so Blaze had told him.

To his relief, Shadow shook off his daze, looking briefly back at Silver with another of those indecipherable looks before moving forward like a statue come to life. "Let's go."

* * *

The worst aspect of the endless, featureless terrain was the seeming futility. Miles and miles of travel seemed to have brought them nowhere, and now Crisis City was only a speck on the horizon, too far away for refuge should they need it.

Silver clung close to Shadow, floating just far enough away not to be knocked about by the black hedgehog's back draft. They hadn't seen any visible threat, but he had a feeling that was more because he didn't know what he was looking for than because it wasn't there. "What will we do if we don't find any shelter before dark?"

"We camp out in the open," Shadow replied. "No light. It might draw attention to us if there's anything out here." It wasn't a prospect Silver was looking forward to, and Shadow must have caught the sound of discontent in his sigh. "You didn't think this would be easy, did you?"

"No," Silver said defensively. Nothing in his lifetime ever had been. "I just feel too exposed out here."

"Agreed." Shadow glanced around, perhaps hopeful that something might present itself on the empty horizon before looking at Silver. "Try flying higher. You might find something we can use."

"Right!" At last, something productive that he could do. Adjusting the angle of his body he let the wind act as a buffer to slowly climb upwards, still trying to maintain the same speed so Shadow wouldn't get too far ahead of him. The first stretch was the hardest, when gravity seemed to press down on his back and the ground didn't seem to recede at all, but after breaking through that nebulous barrier it was suddenly like he was weightless.

He'd always been tempted to see how high he could go, but Blaze had warned him against it. The top of the sky had only thin air and cold – two things Blaze flatly disliked because they affected her flame – and despite Silver's whimsical notion there was most likely nothing above the clouds…although once or twice he thought he'd seen a dark shape floating over Crisis City, but he'd never been certain that it wasn't just a particularly dense cluster of smog. These days the sky was much clearer, Though the sun only shone weakly, as though it were still uncertain about offering its light to the world, it cheered Silver immensely to see it.

He hadn't expected to find much better than an outcrop of rock that might offer some meagre protection, but to his surprise there was something barely visible on the horizon. From this distance he couldn't tell quite what, but it was a tangible feature on an otherwise nondescript landscape, and that was good enough for him.

Newly energised, he dropped eagerly back down beside Shadow. "I saw something. If we keep going in this direction we should run straight into it."

"The Emerald's getting closer," Shadow said thoughtfully, more to himself than Silver.

Silver's ears pricked attentively to the suggestion. If he squinted, the hazy shape was just starting to come into view. It wasn't entirely unlike the distant silhouette of Crisis City. Maybe another town?

He wasn't sure which of them started it, or whether it was a mutual decision, but with a goal in mind they unconsciously quickened their pace. At least they wouldn't have to spend a night out in the open, though whether the alternative was better remained to be seen.

* * *

It turned out to be not a city, but a small base that Shadow's memory told him wasn't any kind of military standard that he was familiar with. Two large smoke stacks didn't seem to be in use, and he could see the crooked outline of a satellite dish that had broken and rusted, but even at a distance he could feel his fur tingle from the electric charge that made the thick cables between energy towers hum.

Shadow didn't like it. Even if his instincts weren't tuned to the dangers of this time, he doubted he was wrong about there being something not right about the place, and not just the inexplicable fact that it still seemed to have power despite its abandoned exterior.

Silver seemed more hopeful. "There's no pockmarks or cracks in the ground. At least we don't have to worry about the worms."

There weren't any prints to suggest those four-legged creatures from the city either, though there were other tracks that Shadow couldn't figure out. They didn't seem especially fresh, but that didn't make him any less wary. He was almost prepared to suggest that they leave, but with night falling slowly he couldn't ignore the obvious protection of the buildings, and though his sense of the Chaos Emerald's location had become oddly indistinct since they'd started approaching the base's proximity, he couldn't ignore that it was nearby.

"Let's see if we can get inside," he said, setting out in hopes of locating a visible door.

The exterior was bizarrely cluttered, with scrap metal clustered in messy piles to make the site look more like a junk yard. It didn't seem to match, and after picking their way around an old sign Silver confirmed his guess. "I've seen posters like this back in the city."

A stack of skeletal cars looked equally out of place. At least some of this junk had been taken from Crisis City, although what purpose it served and how it had gotten there was a mystery. Again, nothing looked like it had been moved recently, but it was yet one more oddity that made Shadow distrustful of the place.

He didn't need to tell Silver to stay close. The initial glamour of being somewhere rather than _nowhere_ seemed to have worn off, and Silver was eyeing the scrap piles uneasily. It would be an unfortunate place for an ambush. Shadow kept their pace quick.

The first door they found was welded shut. Shadow glared at it viciously, but the thick line of scorched metal refused to budge.

"There must be some other way," Silver said trying ineffectively to see over the junk piles. "There's another building over there."

Shadow turned, but as he did so a flicker of movement passed just by the limit of his field vision. He glanced back quickly, but it had vanished around the corner of the building. A trick of light, or…? "Did you see that?"

"See what?" Silver asked, tensing almost imperceptibly in response to his tone.

Shadow made a silent gesture for him to follow, and stalked to the edge of the building. A narrow alley had been made with the scrap backed up to a chain link fence on one side and the side of the building on the other. At first glance it was empty, but he had been trained to observe thoroughly, and high on the wall there was a small vest with its cover knocked askew and left to dangle. It swayed as though from a recent touch.

He looked sternly at Silver. "Wait here while I have a look."

"Shouldn't we stay together?" Silver questioned, but Shadow didn't bother to reply. This smelt like a trap, and it would be better to have only one of them caught in it than both.

He vaulted up to the vent with ease, and though it was dark inside he immediately noticed a discrepancy. If the place were really as abandoned as it looked, the inside of the vent should be thick with dust but instead it was perfectly clean. The observation filled him with a sense of predatory anticipation. Perhaps it was Rouge's lingering influence, but whatever mystery this place held, he would solve it.

"I shouldn't be long," he called downward before climbing into the tight space. He resolved to see what might be waiting at the end of the tunnel, ignoring Silver's grumbling from below.

After all the time he'd spent trapped in small spaces, it was amazing that he hadn't developed an aversion to them. In truth, he still found solid walls more of a comfort than open spaces. The ARK hadn't had grass or trees or fresh air. He hadn't known those freedoms until much later.

The vent suddenly trembled with the resonance of an impact up ahead. He paused only long enough to assess any possible threat before crawling faster, and shortly found the cause. A hole had been torn in the side, the metal shredded as easily as paper, leaving a nice, convenient exit that couldn't have been more noticeable if someone had painted a welcome sign on it.

He should perhaps have displayed a little more caution with such an obvious set-up, but the itch under his skin was announcing itself to be more than simple impatience. He glanced down at his wrists, but the rings that had once held back his power were long gone. He'd removed them himself in the fight to avoid his capture, and without them he was having a much more difficult time controlling his power.

Chaos energy. His body generated it of its own volition, giving him a near endless reserve. Though he could reign it for a time, the more there was, the harder it was to tame. It had been too easy to believe that his sole purpose was to destroy when by simply existing he would eventually overflow with destructive force. Joining GUN had been his salvation, giving him a chance to release that power regularly whilst still carrying out Maria's wishes. Cynically, he had noted that if there was ever a day when he no longer had to fight for peace, there would be no more need for the Ultimate Lifeform.

Wanton destruction was wasteful, and it was his private fear that one day he might start to glorify the act too much to ever stop, so he never allowed himself to simply let go. Always he needed a purpose, a goal, or an enemy to fight, even if it were only sparring with Omega or Rouge-

The chaos spiked, making him visibly flinch, and he silently scolded himself for skirting too close to those memories once again. Dark emotion always incited the chaos to grow faster, and every memory he had of his former partners was tainted with it now. He honestly hoped there was something here that would present itself as an opponent, and with little care to the consequence he leapt down from the vent.

The drop was a mere twenty feet, and he though he made little noise as he landed, he doubted his presence was overlooked. Unlike the outside, the interior of the building made no pretence of abandonment. He could hear the regular churn and clank of machinery, and the place looked spotless and well cared for. Everything was made of metal, but instead of flat, sleek surfaces it was an uneven web of thick cable threaded into the walls and ceiling as though they had grown there, taking root like a tree. It was bizarrely organic looking, and beneath his indifference there was a certain amount of distaste for the sight of it.

Something flashed in the darkness, barely visible as it fled deeper down the twisted passageway. Not just a trick of light then, but something tangible, and on the heels of its retreat he heard an unmistakable echo. Laughter; a deep, taunting chuckle.

It almost made him smirk. "So that's your game."

Hide and seek in the dark. Unknown, dangerous territory. A adversary of unknown intent and abilities. He felt almost nostalgic.

He cast a brief thought back to Silver, but it was better if he followed this path alone. It might still be dangerous – in fact he was counting on it to be – and as long as the other hedgehog didn't wander from where Shadow had left him he should be safe enough.

* * *

Silver did _not_ appreciate being left behind, and scowled fiercely in the direction the black hedgehog had disappeared. Didn't Shadow know it was always safer to go with someone? It was why he and Blaze had been inseparable for years even though she was more independent by nature.

He also didn't like the implication that he couldn't take care of himself, and he kicked huffily at the dirt, ignoring the quiet observation that he was being childish about it and the equally unpleasant knowledge that he just really didn't want to be alone out here. That unpleasant notion that he was being watched had returned with a vengeance once Shadow was out of sight, and the gloom of the alley seemed to be clinging slimily to his fur.

The compulsion to leave was almost enough to make him ignore Shadow's suggestion, but he determinedly forced himself to wait. Shadow said he wouldn't be long, but the minutes dragged on and he started to get nervous. Did something happen? Should he try to follow or find another way in? Wracked by indecision, he turned fiercely to pace in the tight confines of the alley and was stopped dead by the realisation that he was no longer alone.

"Shadow?" he questioned in disbelief. The black hedgehog was standing back at the mouth of the alley, still and silent. Silver hadn't heard him approach at all, and hadn't expected to have him return from that direction. He must have gone right though the building and found another way around.

"What did you find?" he asked, stepping closer, but all of a sudden his instincts were screaming dire warnings that made him pause. Was there a change in the air or was he just being paranoid? He couldn't define it, but when he pressed his senses for more all he got was that there was something wrong with Shadow. Something about the way he stood. Something about his eyes.

"Shadow?" he repeated, unnerved by the lack of reaction. "Are you okay?"

Shadow's head tilted with near-painful slowness, and Silver stood rooted to the spot. Shadow's gaze always had a particular aura of intensity that varied with the heat of his contempt or just the warmth of his scrutiny, but this was different. Cold, like it pierced his soul with a dagger of ice, and immediately he felt a chill that was too much like fear.

But it did not linger, because Shadow suddenly turned away, vanishing behind the corner of the building. Silver needed a few moments to collect himself before he could force himself to move, but after the first stumbling step he snapped back to himself as though from a trance. "Hey, stop!"

He sprinted after the black hedgehog, but was only in time to see the tips of his crooked quills disappearing into the tall stacks of scrap. He hesitated, because suddenly the lonely alley seemed like the preferable alternative to the unknowns of the junkyard, but he couldn't afford to let that stop him. He forced himself not to think of unseen eyes and creeping darkness as he followed the other hedgehog's trail.


End file.
